The right of revolution therefore is really embedded in the right to serve God. A government which interferes with that service, which commands what God forbids, or forbids what he commands, we are bound by our duty to him to change as soon as we have the power. If this is not so, then God has subjected his people to the necessity of always submitting to punishment for obeying his commands, and has cut them off from the only means which can insure their peaceful and secure enjoyment of the liberty to do his will. No one, however, in our land, or of the race to which we belong, will be disposed to question the right of the people to change their form of government. Our history forbids all diversity of sentiment on this subject. We are only concerned to show that the scriptural doctrine of civil government is perfectly consistent with that right; or rather that the right is one of the logical deductions from that doctrine.
We have thus endeavored to prove that government is a divine institution; that obedience to the laws is a religious duty; that such obedience is due in all cases in which it can be rendered with a good conscience; that when obedience can not be yielded without sinning against God, then our duty as individuals is quietly to submit to the infliction of the penalty attached to disobedience; and that the right of resistance or of revolution rests only in the body of people for whose benefit government is instituted.
The application of these principles to the case of the fugitive slave law is so obvious, as hardly to justify remark. The great body of the people regard that law as consistent with the constitution of the country and the law of God. Their duty, therefore, in the premises, whether they think it wise or unwise, is perfectly plain. Those who take the opposite view of the law, having in the great majority of cases, nothing to do with enforcing it, are in no measure responsible for it. Their duty is limited to the use of peaceable and constitutional means to get it repealed. A large part of the people of this country thought the acquisition of Louisiana; the admission of Texas into the Union by a simple resolution; the late Mexican war; were either unjust or unconstitutional, but there was no resistance to these measures. None was made, and none would have been justifiable. So in the present case, as the people generally are not called upon either to do, or to forbear from doing, any thing their conscience forbids, all resistance to the operation of this law on their part must be without excuse. With regard to the executive officers, whose province it is to carry the law into effect, though some of them may disapprove of it as unwise, harsh, or oppressive, still they are bound to execute it, unless they believe the specific act which they are called upon to perform involves personal criminality, and then their duty is the resignation of their office, and not resistance to the law. There is the most obvious difference between an officer being called upon, for example, to execute a decision of a court, which in his private opinion he thinks unjust, and his being called upon to blaspheme, or commit murder. The latter involves personal guilt, the former does not. He is not the judge of the equity or propriety of the decision which he is required to carry into effect. It is evident that the wheels of society would be stopped, if every officer of the government, and every minister of justice should feel that he is authorized to sit in judgment on the wisdom or righteousness of any law he was called upon to execute. He is responsible for his own acts, and not for the judgments of others, and therefore when the execution of a law or of a command of a superior does not require him to sin, he is free to obey.
Again, in those cases in which we, as private individuals, may be called upon to assist in carrying the fugitive slave law into effect, if we can not obey, we must do as the Quakers have long done with regard to our military laws, i. e. quietly submit. We have no right to resist, or in any way to impede the operation of the law. Whatever sin there is in it, does not rest on us, any more than the sin of our military system rests on the Quakers.[259]
And finally as regards the fugitives themselves, their obvious duty is submission. To them the law must appear just as the laws of the Pagans against Christians, or of Romanists against Protestants, appeared to those who suffered from them. And the duty in both cases is the same. Had the martyrs put to death the officers of the law, they would in the sight of God and man have been guilty of murder. And any one who teaches fugitive slaves to resort to violence even to the sacrifice of life, in resisting the law in question, it seems to us, is guilty of exciting men to murder. As before remarked, the principle of self-defense does not apply in this case. Is there no difference between a man who kills an assassin who attempts his life on the highway, and the man who, though knowing himself to be innocent of the crime for which he has been condemned to die, should kill the officers of justice? The former is a case of justifiable homicide, the other is a case of murder. The officers of justice are not the offenders. They are not the persons responsible for the law or the decision. That responsibility rests on the government. Private vengeance can not reach the state. And if it could, such vengeance is not the remedy ordained by God for such evils. They are to be submitted to, until the government can be changed. How did our Lord act when he was condemned by an oppressive judgment, and with wicked hands crucified and slain? Did he kill the Roman soldiers? Has not he left us an example that we should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself unto him that judgeth righteously. On this principle did all his holy martyrs act; and on this principle are we bound to act in submitting to the laws of the land, even when we deem them oppressive or unjust.
The principles advocated in this paper appear to us so elementary, that we feel disposed to apologize for presenting them in such a formal manner. But every generation has to learn the alphabet for itself. And the mass of men are so occupied with other matters, that they do not give themselves time to discriminate. Their judgments are dictated, in many cases, by their feelings, or their circumstances. One man simply looks to the hardship of forcing a slave back to bondage, and he impulsively counsels resistance unto blood. Another looks to the evils which follow from resistance to law, and he asserts that human laws are in all cases to be obeyed. Both are obviously wrong. Both would overthrow all government. The one by justifying every man's taking the law into his own hands; and the other by destroying the authority of God, which is the only foundation on which human government can rest. It is only by acting on the direction of the Divine Wisdom incarnate: "Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's," that these destructive extremes are to be avoided. Government is a divine institution; obedience to the laws is commanded by God; and yet like all other divine commands of the same class, there are cases in which it ceases to be obligation. Of these cases every one must judge for himself on his own responsibility to God and man; but when he cannot obey, his duty is to submit. The divinely appointed remedy for unjust or oppressive legislation is not private or tumultuous opposition, but the repeal of unrighteous enactments, or the reorganization of the government.
What, however, we have had most at heart in the preparation of this article, is the exhibition of the great principle that all authority reposes on God; that all our obligations terminate on him; that government is not a mere voluntary compact, and obedience to law an obligation which rests on the consent of the governed. We regard this as a matter of primary importance. The character of men and of communities depends, to a great extent on their faith. The theory of morals which they adopt determines their moral charactcter. If they assume that expediency is the rule of duty, that a thing is right because it produces happiness, or wrong because it produces misery, that this tendency is not merely the test between right and wrong, but the ground of the distinction, then, the specific idea of moral excellence and obligation is lost. All questions of duty are merged into a calculation of profit and loss. There is no sense of God; reason or society takes his place, and an irreligious, calculating cast of character is the inevitable result. This is counteracted, in individuals and the community by various causes, for neither the character of a man nor that of a society is determined by any one opinion; but its injurious influence may nevertheless be most manifest and deplorable. No man can fail to see the deteriorating influence of this theory of morals on public character both in this country and in England. If we would make men religious and moral, instead of merely cute, let us place God before them; let us teach them that his will is the ground of their obligations; that they are responsible to him for all their acts; that their allegiance as moral agents is not to reason or to society, but to the heart-searching God; that the obligation to obey the laws of the land does not rest on their consent to them, but to the fact government is of God; that those who resist the magistrate, resist the ordinance of God, and that they who resist, shall receive unto themselves damnation. This is the only doctrine which can give stablity either to morals or to government. Man's allegiance is not to reason in the abstract, nor to society, but to a personal God, who has power to destroy both soul and body in hell. This is a law revealed in the constitution of our nature, as well as by the lips of Christ. And to no other sovereign can the soul yield rational obedience. We might as well attempt to substitute some mechanical contrivance of our own, for the law of gravitation, as a means of keeping the planets in their orbits, as to expect to govern men by any thing else than the fear of an Infinite God.
